Cadaver 10-191 is the center of attention in instructor Danielle King’s Anatomy 1 class. In the classroom’s anatomy lab, a group of students in lab coats crowd around 10-191 and watch intently as Jason de Guzman and his partner point out important features of the cardiovascular system. They expose the cadaver’s lungs, heart, tissue membranes and other organs to fellow students. A monitor overhead shows a video feed of the demonstration for those who can’t see over their classmates’ shoulders.

Once the demonstration ends, more students form groups around the other cadavers in the lab_x001F_. It is a chance for them to personally study the bodies. The success of these students in the class, and in their future careers in the medical field, absolutely depends on getting to know 10-191 and the cadavers.

Students taking Anatomy 1 usually realize quickly why the class has a reputation for being one of the toughest courses at SRJC. Not only does it require a large time commitment, the students have to prepare themselves to deal with the dead.

For Danielle King, the cadavers are an indispensable part of the students’ education.

“I think it is the best resource that a student can possibly have,” King says. “And the students will no doubt tell you the same thing because I hear that from them all the time. There’s just no substitute for the real thing.”

Aside from their textbooks, Anatomy 1 students have access to a wide variety of resources, including three-dimensional models. But students immediately learn that cadavers offer something pictures and models don’t: the chance to learn from the human body itself.

“It’s so different in three dimensions. It’s completely different,” says anatomy student Karen Smith. Along with fellow student Dana Molinsky, she tries to find certain arteries and veins in one cadaver.

“In the book, you get to see everything is clean and perfect,” Molinsky says. “And when you get to cadavers, you realize what it really is inside. You get the opportunity to handle the reality of it all.”

For some students, working with the cadavers gives the complexity of the human body a sense of clarity unlike anything lectures or books could convey.

“Everything makes sense,” says Kevin Corriea. “Structure, function, it all makes sense.”

To students like Corriea, being able to touch and handle human organs “makes it real,” as opposed to learning about them in books. King says the cadavers bring an element of tangibility in a field of study that has a lot of conceptualizing.

  “If you’re going to learn something, then you should have that real thing,” says Molinsky. “Having that actual thing to work with is much better than reading about it.”

Kings says, “When students touch and they actually get to move organs relative to other things, they’re actually doing the discovery part of the dissection.” The class begins with dissecting the skin, then the muscles, then the individual body cavities and finally the individual organ systems. “That process of discovery is slow, tedious and messy. But it’s so much more rewarding for the student to finally go, ‘Wow, there’s the left internal carotid artery!’ as opposed to just walking over to the model and pointing at it.”

The cadavers are different sexes, ages and physical shape. Some had cancer or other diseases, while others had surgical operations. King says this shows students that human bodies vary on the inside just as they do on the outside. Another significant advantage learning from cadavers has over books, lectures and pictures is that it helps students deal with the unpleasantness of working with the human body, preparing them for the realities of working in the medical field.

For Anatomy 1 students the sights, smells and feel of being with the cadavers takes some getting used to.

“The first day, I found it a little gruesome,” says Smith. For her, the worst part of working with the cadavers is the odor of formaldehyde coming from the bodies, despite the effective ventilation system in the lab’s cadaver room. Still, the intense academic aspects of being in anatomy class helps her push aside the unpleasantness of studying cadavers. “You have so much work to do. You have to focus.”

King remembers having students who were frightened to tears when they saw the cadavers that eventually became more comfortable and “hands-on” in their approach with the bodies. Students say that being uncomfortable with the cadavers is a normal part of the experience.

 “I think it’s weird of you’re not nervous,” says Corriea, who admits that he prefers not to touch the cadavers.

“I think you just got to get used to it,” says another student, while she traces an artery from a cadaver’s stomach with her gloved fingers.

“Think of the cadaver as a tool of science,” says student Alex Pili. “Try not to get too grossed out.”

King says it’s best not to view the cadavers too personally.

“During the course of the semester the student has to work to make the experience a little more clinical and a little less personal so that they can dissect,” she says “It’s very hard of course to do a dissection if you’re thinking about them as individual human beings. So I think it definitely starts to help develop their clinical approach, just like when you’re a nurse.”

Despite maintaining an impersonal attitude towards the cadavers, King stresses the importance of respecting the bodies to her students. Unprofessional and disrespectful behavior is not tolerated in Anatomy 1.

“At this moment, they’re cadavers, but not too long ago they were living, breathing, human beings. They were somebody’s loved one,” she says. “And I always tell my students to keep that in mind because here is a stranger who has given us, what I say is really the ultimate gift.”

Santa Rosa Junior College acquires the cadavers though University of California, San Francisco’s Willed Body Program, where donors sign up to have their bodies donated for medical education and research when they die. UCSF embalms the bodies, and through a partnership with UCSF, the cadavers are loaned to SRJC.

Science Lab Assistant Pete Arnold is responsible for requesting cadavers for delivery to SRJC.

“Our only special request is that we have one of each sex,” Arnold says. “We get three new ones each regular semester, and one during the summer.”

With four cadavers available for students every semester, SRJC’s anatomy department is exceptionally fortunate, something that instructors and students are thankful for.

King recalls her time as an anatomy student at Humboldt State University, where she only got to dissect cats. She said that coming to SRJC’s anatomy department and realizing that students do their own dissections with human cadavers was a pleasant surprise.

“I think we’re very lucky,” King says. “The opportunity for undergraduate students, let alone community college undergraduate students, to get to do their own dissections, that’s really rare and that’s something that’s very special about Santa Rosa Junior College.”

Her students agree.

“It’s so fascinating,” says Molinsky. “I just feel so privileged that we get to do this.”

“I have a friend who is an ultrasound technician. She’s working with livers, and yet she’s never actually seen a real liver,” Smith says. “She desperately would love to come in and look over our shoulders. So I just feel so lucky to get this opportunity.”

For Anatomy 1 students, working with cadavers instills a sense of wonder about the human body and it dramatically changes their v
iew of the body.

“It makes you want to eat better, because now you know what fat looks like,” said one student.

Corriea calls the human body “the perfect machine.”

“It’s just awesome the way you look at it and you see how everything interacts with each other,” he says. “It’s like the space shuttle. It’s that perfect.”

King, an anatomy instructor for eight years, says teaching her class without the cadavers would be “vastly different.”

“I don’t even want to imagine what my job would be like teaching Anatomy 1 without the cadavers,” she says. “I think they’re the best resource that we have, and I think the students benefit so much. There’s nothing that I can think of that can replace it.”

Students who pass Anatomy 1 have a reputation for being well-prepared as they move on with their medical education, and King says that working with cadavers plays a huge part in their preparedness.

At the end of lab, the students clean up after themselves. With care and respect towards the cadavers, they carefully wrap up 10-191 and the other cadavers before they zip the body bags close.

“Not a lot of us want to think about what will happen to our bodies once we die; not a lot of us plan for it, and even if we did, not a lot of us would be willing to make that kind of donation,” King says. “Here is a person who is the ultimate teacher, because in giving this gift they have now touched the lives of hundreds of students who they never knew in life.”